Interesting reads…

“bullet” TalkLeft has the unbelievable story of Miguel Mendoza Palominos, a poor Mexican who just received 10 years in federal prison for the crime of being duped into being a patsy for a marijuana grow operation. So now we’ll spend about $25,000 a year to house him in prison and then we’ll send him back to Mexico. Dumb.
“bullet” Also from TalkLeft comes this article by Paul Armentano of the NORML Foundation:

Suspicionless student drug testing is a humiliating, invasive practice that runs contrary the principles of due process. It compels teens to submit evidence against themselves and to forfeit their privacy rights as a necessary requirement for attending school. Rather than presuming our school children innocent of illicit activity — as statistically, the overwhelming majority of them are — until proven guilty, this policy presumes them guilty until they prove themselves innocent. Is this truly the message the Bush administration wishes to send to America’s young people?

You can make your voice heard here.
“bullet” LastOneSpeaks is on top of the continuing problem of spraying in Columbia and points out the new online version of the Columbia Week newsletter.

State Department figures from 2002 found a resulting 15 percent decline in Colombian coca cultivation, but also showed a 23 percent jump in Bolivian cultivation and an 8 percent jump in cultivation in Peru. Even within Colombia, spraying has spurred a balloon effect, spreading cultivation to provinces and regions previously free of coca, including Colombia’s highly biodiverse national parks.

Just is case you want to know what our foreign policy in Latin America looks like, check this out.